


heavy is the head that wears the crown (of thorns)

by jamesstruttingpotter



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 08:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2574488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesstruttingpotter/pseuds/jamesstruttingpotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity has always believed in things bigger than herself. Unfortunately, she tends to fall in love with boys who believe the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heavy is the head that wears the crown (of thorns)

**Author's Note:**

> So there's this gorgeous poem written by Jeanann Verlee titled "Lessons on Loving a Prophet" and it reminded me so much of Oliver and Felicity. You guys should check it out.
> 
> On a more practical note, this is pretty AU. I've reshuffled the order of events and reinterpreted them.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

He suits up, and on the periphery, Felicity offers up a prayer. She's not sure to whom. All she knows is that there are computers to be hacked, information to be mined, and later, bandages to be ripped. He pulls on his hood and puts on his mask. She listens to him breathe, her earpiece relaying his even breaths a half-second late. She will listen to this sound for the rest of the night while her fingers tap against her keys. Later, much later, the breaths will turn laborious. 

This is when she turns from the screens in front of her to the gauze behind her.

* * *

The blood is dark as it drips through her fingers. "These are new," she tells him, wrapping the shredded fabric around his torso. He watches her, hands flat against the medical table, eyes half-lidded. "I'll try to pad it as well as John does, but you know he's better at this than I am."

"It's fine." His tone is soft. Light glances off the profile of his nose when she looks up at him. His shorn head is turned downward, the tilt of his mouth almost at a smile. She knots the bandage, pulls the ends tightly, bites her lip at his pained exhale. "You send Roy home for the night?"

"Well, sort of. He may have saved the city with you tonight, but he does have another job he has to attend to afterwards."

"Right, assistant manager." He pushes off from the table. "With Thea."

"I think your sister can handle herself," she quips. He smiles at that for some reason, wide enough to make her chest ache, with an expression that has her looking away. "But it's late. Home sounds like a good idea." She gathers her coat and handbag, the click of her heels and rustling of her clothes somehow louder than they were seconds ago. She's almost to the stairs when he stops her.

"Felicity." His voice is quiet, firm. It wraps around her wrists and settles heavily on her chest. "Good job tonight."

She breathes in. Then she breathes out. "You too."

She doesn't breathe in again until she gets outside, until she sees the burning lights of their home.

* * *

His lips are cracked and bloody, whipped by the wind of the city he is trying to resurrect before it falls to ash. There are shadows under his skin, staining his eyes. He is on his knees.

"Felicity," he says.

"It's over," she promises, stroking his face. He flinches. The blue of his irises arrests her for a moment before they fall on her computers.

"It's never over," he promises, turning away from her fingers. "But you'll stay with me."

"To the end. There has to be an end, Oliver."

He doesn't respond, but he rests his forehead against her legs. Felicity takes this and does not ask for more. But his hand finds the hem of her dress, and suddenly she's taking what she can get, him still in his leathers and mask.

When he finally lets himself be kissed, she tastes blood.

* * *

Sara's body is limp on the med table. Oliver's is tense. His hand strays forward, as if to hold hers, before he withdraws. "This," he says, and his tone is hollow. "This is our legacy."

Felicity takes off her glasses, bones heavy with grief and exhaustion.

"It always ends the way Sara did," he adds. "There is no - no peaceful death, no waiting for old age to catch up. There is  _this_ \- " he points to his arrows - "and it leads to  _this_." His fingers tremble as they brush Sara's hair.

"You're wrong. This isn't - this is not how our crusade ends." 

He looks up at that, the snap of his head startling her. "No," he growls, and for a second she forgets about Oliver Queen. "This is not yours _._ This ending is ours, _not yours_."

She stares at him. "You're wrong," she repeats, and he shakes his head violently. "I am just as much a part of this as you are." She struggles to keep her voice from sounding argumentative. "This is my mission, my  _city_ , just as much as it is yours. If this is the ending you're prescribing for yourself, it's my ending too."

"Do not say that." His muscles coil under his skin. "You aren't going to die down here, Felicity. Not if I have anything to do with it."

"Then give yourself a different ending!" she explodes. "You weren't meant for this, Oliver, you weren't meant to die under fluorescent lights beneath a club in the middle of the Glades. The city needs you, yes, but one day it won't, one day it will survive without you forcing air into its lungs." She is pleading, unashamed and desperate for his absolution. "A different ending, Oliver. Please."

He turns away, fists clenching and unclenching by his sides. "This is mine," he says.

* * *

She has been expecting it for some time now, but when it finally happens, she still feels like she has been sucker-punched.

"I can't... I can't be both. Felicity, I'm sorry, I just - "

"I know." Her next words are heavy on her tongue. "You can't be with me, not while you have the city. I know."

His fingers trace the slope of her cheekbone. "If I hadn't become the Arrow - "

"- you wouldn't be the man I love." And there it is, the word that has been like a thorn in her side, burrowing into her flesh and collecting blood from her heart. "We just weren't... There is no conceivable way to make this work, in that universe or this one."

His eyes find hers. "You always say the truth so easily."

She takes a step back. "If you think this is easy, you don't know me at all."

* * *

He fights. Every night he buys back some salvation for the city, and every night his blood is the price. 

She watches. She binds his wounds, leads him through the nexus of information he needs, maps a path through Starling and to the cross on which he hangs himself. 

One day, she will roll back the tombstone and find that his body is still in there, that he has not left his shroud behind to find her again. She knows this with grim certainty, with a knot of terror that chokes her every time his heart stops beating. 

Her one comfort is that some days, she swallows the possibility that her messiah has not yet come.

Some days, she lets herself believe that he will come again.


End file.
